CLIMATE CHANGE PIONEERS AND T.E.A. PARTY PATRIOTEERS (Exclusive to NewEnergyNews)

Climate Change Pioneers and T.E.A. Party Patrioteers
By Herman K. Trabish, August 24, 2009 (NewEnergyNews)

According to the virulently anti-Obama T.E.A. Party Patriots, the energy and climate legislation now on the table in the Senate will (1) fund “polluting industries” 5 times more than it will fund New Energy and Energy Efficiency, (2) leave U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (GhGs) unchanged through 2030 and (3) unaffordably increase electricity prices.

In passing, the Tea Party also asserts that (1) carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a greenhouse gas, (2) global climate change ended in 1998 (thanks to a mysterious deep ocean thermostat that moderates world climate) and (3) 721 scientists in 41 countries have concluded that a Medieval “warming” disproves everything the thousands of climate specialists from the 192-nation United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agree is true about global climate change based on a preponderance of scientific evidence covering tens of thousands of years.

What the Tea Partiers say the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) will do is in rather sharp contradiction to what Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), powerful Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and ACES’s co-author, said it will do. During his presentation climaxing a forum at UCLA on Friday, Waxman promised the bill would (1) cut U.S. GhGs 17% (or more) by 2020 and put the nation on track to cut its GhGs 83% by 2050, (2) deliver billions for New Energy and Energy Efficiency, (3) make the nation more secure and (4) contribute to the economic rebound with a big infusion of jobs and revenue-producing investment.

It could be there is a difference in perspective. While the Tea Partiers’ position as outsiders is well earned by their utterly insubstantial, veritably fictitious assertions about climate change in general and ACES in particular, Representative Waxman has spent more than 3 decades quietly working his way into the innermost of the insider circles of power and authority.

Representative Waxman with other powerbrokers (President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev), Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif). (click to enlarge)

Waxman’s appearance at UCLA was hosted by California State Senator Fran Pavley (D-Thousand Oaks). Pavley is a long-time champion of the environment and her key role in the writing of AB 32, California’s breakthrough emissions reduction legislation, was recognized when she was included among the short list of special invitees at the Rose Garden ceremony in June at which President Obama announced his Executive Order making AB 32’s tough emissions standards the new federal standards.

President Obama announcing his Executive Order making the AB 32 emissions standards the federal standards. From AssociatedPress via YouTube.

The UCLA forum was an opportunity for Waxman, Pavley and an impressive panel of invited experts to talk about House Resolution (HR) 2454 (ACES) , Assembly Bill (AB) 32 and the future of emissions reduction legislation at the state and federal levels.

In front of UCLA’s Korn Hall and Anderson School of Management, where the forum was held, temporary fencing created a funnel through which attendees marched and separated enclosed areas that segregated anti-climate change/anti-health insurance reform Tea Partiers and their cohorts in one area and a coterie of Obama-supporting Organizing For America ralliers in another.

A brief chat with a spokeswoman for the T.E.A. Party Patriots revealed their contempt both for the Democrats' legislative initiatives and for fact. The spokeswoman, for instance, said that there is no “global warming” because she had read a 27-page paper that convinced her there is something that happens deep in the oceans (she couldn’t explain what in any detail) that will automatically regulate changes in climate. She also insisted President Obama has recently funneled $500 million dollars to support offshore oil drilling in Brazil despite opposing it in this country.

T.E.A. Party protestors in action. Surveys show the protest is largely from people in their middle years and older. (click to enlarge)

When asked to clarify her position on climate change, she said humans have little to do with “global warming.” Asked if there was something we could do to affect the “little” human impacts, she said “better treaties.” When asked what kind of treaties, she said, “that’s where the U.N. should come in. But not Kyoto.” When asked if she thought the upcoming summit in Copenhagen might hammer out such a “better” treaty, she said she didn’t know anything about the Copenhagen summit.

Some readers may likewise not be aware that world political, environmental and UN leaders have been rigorously planning in great detail for, and holding preliminary negotiating sessions regularly about, the Copenhagen meeting since last year’s landmark international climate change summit in Bali.

But someone who takes it on herself to be the spokeswoman for the most outspoken attack on Representative Waxman’s energy and climate bill, the most hard fought national effort ever to pass legislation putting the U.S. back into the world’s fight against global climate change, ought to at least be aware of the Copenhagen summit, the most important international event yet to be held on the topic.

Mr. Waxman said it well in his introductory remarks. ACES (HR 2454) takes on the nation’s most crucial challenges, (1) cutting GhGs, (2) decreasing U.S. dependence on imported oil and (3) transforming the economy. “What can be more important?” he asked.

In her introductory remarks, Senator Pavley underscored Waxman’s point-making question by asserting, "There is a real cost of doing nothing." There is also a reward for doing what Representative Waxman is trying to do, which is to push landmark legislation through a political system resistant to landmark or any other kind of progress. The reward for the accomplishment, Pavley said, is that "…secure clean supplies [of energy] at home are in everyone's best interest."

Senator Pavley being thanked by the President for her work on AB 32. (click to enlarge)
Senator Pavley with EPA head and fellow Californian Lisa Jackson at the Rose Garden event. (click to enlarge)

Stanford University Professor of Environmental Studies Stephen Schneider was the first and most engaging of the forum panel’s speakers. He jokingly referred to the deniers who drove the climate change discussion for most of this decade as “petroleum geologists who know nothing about climate science” and "Professor Limbaugh" and then gestured to Waxman and Pavley and said, "These quiet pioneers have transformed the world."

As the strongest voice for science on the panel, Schneider set the tone of the session when he said that though any and all science is always work-in-progress, the evidence of global climate change induced by human-spewed GhGs is simply "unequivocal."

Retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn talked about think-tank work in which he continues to participate that is examining the national security implications of global climate change. (A report on which he worked was part of IF CLIMATE CHANGE IS A HOAX, WHY IS THE MILITARY PLANNING FOR IT?, a recent NewEnergyNews post.) Vice-Admiral McGinn left little doubt of the urgency of the matter or that military planners have begun to understand what Representative Waxman’s leadoff question implicitly understands. (“What can be more important?”)

Retired Vice Admiral McGinn is now affiliated with CNA. (click to enlarge)

Entrepreneur Bob Epstein, UCLA Law Professor Ann Carlson and California Air Resources Senior Policy Advisor Anthony Eggert discussed aspects of HR 2454 and AB 32. They offered a lot of detail but not a lot of context. Although enlightening, it was hard to know exactly how and why the state and federal bills were being overlapped. Perhaps because California is a trendsetter, so that what is in AB 32 but not in HR 2454 must eventually be accounted for at the federal level? Or perhaps because – and this is the question of the hour – HR 2454, though these insiders will not say so, is already doomed by opposition in the Senate?

Both in the pre-event press conference and in his more substantive concluding presentation, Representative Waxman expressed confidence. He said the final bill was written in partnership with moderate Midwestern political leaders and based on guidelines established in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) coalition of huge corporate interests. He seemed almost certain some form of energy and climate legislation would find its way through the Senate, make it to a Conference Committee with the House and emerge as a substantive piece of legislation that will act as a second economic stimulus, unleashing new investment, growth, jobs and revenues.

Representative Waxman with the President. (click to enlarge)

Referring to the 35,000 new jobs created by the wind industry in 2008 as an indication of New Energy’s potential, he foresaw 185,000 new jobs by 2020 in New Energy and Energy Efficiency. He described the legislation’s billions for investment, including $60 billion for (choke) “clean” coal technology, $20 billion for battery electric vehicle (BEV) technology, $20 billion for New Energy R&D and $480 million for building retrofits and adaptations to climate change.

He reiterated that the bill would use a market-oriented cap&trade system to cut U.S. GhGs 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 80% below 2005 levels by 2050. Allowances will be given or auctioned to emitters, incentivizing them to lower emissions and build New Energy. Over half the allowances will be allocated in a way that protects consumers from increased energy costs so that the entire GhG-cutting scheme will add less than 50 cents per day to the average energy bill. In passing, Waxman briefly described how the cap&trade system will apply market forces to drive investment in stopping the destruction of the world’s forests, one of the worst causes of GhGs.

Studies by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and...(click to enlarge)
...the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and...(click to enlarge)
...the Energy Information Administration (EIA) all show the costs of the energy and climate bill and its cap&trade system will be modest, especially compared to the costs of doing nothing and the benefits a New Energy economy will bring. (click to enlarge)

Waxman admitted the bill had compromises in it to accommodate states with less New Energy and emissions-cutting potential than California, but he said he was more interested in getting a bill in place while the Obama administration has momentum and Democrats have majorities in both houses of Congress. “The essential thing is to get going with this now…” Waxman said. “We want a bill to be passed and signed before the Copenhagen conference. What a change for this administration to go there as leaders, not as deniers. I hope with this legislation we will now take our rightful place…”

The U.S. role in the international fight against global climate change, and its failure under the previous administration, clearly weighs on Waxman. He said, in answer to a question about bringing China and India into a world agreement, “We need their participation in the effort. But they’re not doing anything because we’re not and we’re not doing anything because they’re not. That’s not college level, that’s grammar school level.”

Waxman insisted, however, that his commitment to emissions reduction is not just for the benefit of the rest of the world. “We’re going to develop ‘clean’ coal technology and market it in China for the benefit of our industry, our jobs and our economy and to show we’re doing our job and we need them to act…”

But is Waxman right to be confident about getting a bill out of the Senate that he can take through a Conference Committee process and reach a workable compromise on? Is he even as confident as his words indicated?

There was certainly something a little defensive about his insistence that the legislation, especially the controversial cap&trade provision, would get backing from moderates. The defensiveness also seemed to show when he insisted his bill was based on a plan approved by Big Business and contained compromises agreed on with Midwestern (Big Agro) legislators. If there was so much agreement, there would not be so much doubt about the legislation's viability in the Senate.

In answer to the day’s last question, Mr. Waxman gave a stirring declaration of the value of his work. He is right. As Professor Schneider said early in the day, Waxman is a true climate change hero in the political arena. The difficulty is that the political arena includes not only those in the UCLA forum’s audience but those who were outside in the plaza.

Though the Tea Party spokeswoman did not know of the UN Copenhagen summit, she had a definite opinion about the UN. It should stick to its efforts with children, she said, suggesting the UN to her is rather Mickey Mouse. She was referring to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) but in her Mouseketeer version of insight didn’t seem to know its name. As we parted, she left a strong doubt about whether she knew any more about UNICEF’s great work than she does about the Herculean effort the UN has invested in making the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) effective.

The UN has had its share of successes and failures in its 60 years at doing the world's most difficult kind of work. The Nobel Prize Committee apparently thought the IPCC, the UN’s panel of climate scientists, had done something right because it awarded them a Nobel Peace Prize. But it is understandable the Tea Party spokeswoman, who believes there is something inexplicably complex that happens deep in the oceans that automatically regulates climate change, might find the winning of the Nobel award difficult to appreciate.

Late in the morning, a representative of the Tea Party Patrioteers carrying an American flag and wearing signs decrying health insurance reform adamantly insisted on invading the Obama-backers’ section of the plaza. Told he was not supposed to be there, he declared that he was an American and could go where he wanted to. An Obama supporter mentioned the woman carrying a picture of the President defaced with a Hitler mustache who recently confronted Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass). Her inane question comparing the President’s constructive health insurance reforms with Nazi Party ideas prompted Representative Frank to ask her what planet she spent her time on. At least, the Obama supporter noted, this guy knows what country he is in.

From DrudgeReportUSA via YouTube

On an issue as urgent and complicated as climate change, knowing what country he is in just isn’t enough. He needs to know where his real interests are.